To be a winning player and well rounded human being, it's important to acknowledge that emotional and psychological issues can affect our play in ways we don't like.

There's no doubt that knowing proper mathematical plays is mandatory, and if we don't know them, we must learn them.

The other side of the coin is the psychological aspects. Those can be much more variable and harder to control - especially if we don't have the psychological skills and knowledge we need.

Mental game books, like Positive Poker and Mental Game of Poker, are aimed at helping people understand their psychology better so they can become more balanced players.

Thanks for sharing your experiences at the table and best of luck going forward to you!

Tricia

I wonder if people's views on this (and any) subject are colored by their level of experience.

Probably so. In my mind, there would be a difference in level of awareness about the importance of psychological issues depending on where one is at in their journey. Having said that, everyone can benefit from this information - but whether or not one understands that is a different story. In my experience with with many clients over the years, those who most need the information and skills tend to be the ones who don't want it or seek it out. How's that for irony?

Cheers,

Tricia

I know that I progress as both a poker player and a person, I think about drastically different things as I am enlightened to new topics. Eventually the old topics become second nature and I focus on new concepts.

Hi Doc:

This is certainly a good point. In May, I attended the 15th Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking:

http://gaming.unlv.edu/icgrt.html

and heard a number of papers dealing with the psychology of gambling, especially related to problem gamblers, and literally felt like a fish out of water. My view, from lots of years of doing this stuff, is very different from the people who study this stuff, and I think a lot of it is that my experiences, and this includes what I observe, is much different from what most of these people think.

Along these lines, when our work on the next Harrington book is finished, and that can be several months, I'll try to take a look at some of these poker psychology books and report back here as to what my opinion is.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi pokerplayer:

Not quite. My description of tilt is that the brain locks up and does something like going into an infinite programming loop. My examples of losing a few hands or having aces beat is just that, examples. But the result is essentially the same.

Also, you're not describing my tennis example the same way as I described it. It's essentially the same model as my poker examples. And when you say:

this is again consistent with my paper. By better understanding poker situations, where the right decision can be obtained quickly, your example would not happen.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason, you make an excellent point; our experiences do color the lens with which we see and interpret things.

Also, the studies you heard use specific operational definitions to define the terms that were being measured. Operational definitions are very specific and often can be quite different from casual usage of terms. In our everyday lives we tend to be much less precise in our definitions. Because of this, the general public has many definitions for things like "problem gambling" or "tilt" or any other construct you can think of. When diagnosing psychological disorders (including gambling addiction), we use the DSM-V for diagnostic criteria. (The DSM-V stand for Diagnostic and Statical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Ed.). The diagnostic criteria are very specific and may include concepts that the non-psychological population is not familiar with.

I always caution my students & clients on a couple of things. First psychology is a probabilistic science - what I go over & suggest is true for most people - but not all. That's the nature of the beast when you are dealing with human beings who have their own biology/psychology/sociology, etc.

Second, it is important not to draw firm conclusions from limited sample sizes. As we get more data we can be more confident of our findings.

Third, it is important to watch for bias (our own and others), in order to understand how that is coloring our perceptions.

Fourth, going to a knowledgeable source (like Mason) can be a wonderful source of new ideas and inspirations that can be tested by psychologists using more scientific methods to see what new things we can learn.

Finally, the scientific understanding of human beings is an ongoing process that still has a long way to go. Having said that, though, there is much that we do know now that can be useful to poker players.

Cheers,

Tricia

I don't believe top players always know the most +EV decision/line. Strong professional level player don't know the most EV decision in all situations(I am one of these guys playing NLH). The other 99% of players certainly don't know.

I would say that discipline breaking down is a mental game issue maybe there is a better name for this than "mental toughness". Knowing hand XY is a fold and still playing it is the issue. I feel like the "mental game" books are an attempt to help people narrow the gap between knowing what to do and constantly doing it on the felt.

In the above referenced article Mason say's "I have written many times that understanding the game of poker well is the best cure for tilt". I would agree that improving one's skill/understanding is critical to curing tilt but some other things in these mental game books can help with the very process you are describing.

One of the things I liked about Tendler's MGOP is his description about the adult learning model. He points out that noting our areas of tilt should give us clues as to what parts of poker theory/strategy we need to study more deeply.

I am currently reading Tendler's book

it is much different from Positive Poker, in a better way

I would recommend reading both because they are both between $20 and $30

Would you care to elaborate on your second sentence?

Positive Poker gives out a lot of advice to me that anyone with a clue should already know or advice that to me is silly

for example, Positive Poker suggests getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet & exercising to improve your mental state to play poker

that to me is about as obvious as 1+1=2

also, the entire chapter on self-confidence makes me laugh because there is nothing that the average, successful adult in any profession would not already know

Tendler's book, I am in the middle of & will elaborate further on in the future

i will just say at this point that he seems to be more of a mental coach versus stating the obvious

There's much more to the book than just this. The purpose of the book is to help people understand the empirical research related to developing elite status. One chapter outlines the foundational aspects (diet, exercise, sleep, etc.) and the rest outline the research on the other important psychological aspects and shows readers how to apply it to their own situations.

Inside the Poker Mind by John Feeney is the best work on the subject that Positive Poker and Mental Game of Poker cover.

But Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins is best.

I'm a fan of Mental Game of Poker and would recommend it to any player.

I read the positive poker and I am kinda torn. Firstly It seems that Tricia tried to cover everything and in the end didn't cover anything really in depth. So there is a lot of interesting stuff just not explained well enough so you could create based on that workable solutions/strategies without really looking into additional resources . It made me interesting tho and I bought the books mentioned by Tricia (e.g. Terry Orlick book, Albert Ellis book and William Glasser Choice Theory) and will probably look again into the book for new ideas at some point again.

The whole book seemed like that for me so lots of good ideas but never really explained in depth. Thats why I think that Jared Tendler approach is better because in his book he gave people clear strategies to improve while in positive poker I haven't seen that.
While for me it isn't that big of a disadvantage I am sure that for many it is/will be.

So If you are willing to dig yourself a lot and explore fresh ideas I would easily recommend positive poker but if you just look for strategies to improve your mental game and performance I would just go with The Mental Game of Poker 1&2 + the Peak performance poker book.
Simply because there are already ideas what to do and how while in positive poker there are lots of good ideas but never explained good enough that you could create workable strategies without looking into additional resources ( which I already started to explore myself)

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts.

I can't disagree with your comments as there have been many books written on the subjects we cover in the book (and there will be many more to come). Keep in mind that most of this material has not been introduced to the general poker population, so it is an introduction of sorts in that respect. Also, it is at least in part a summation of the skills that the elite players I interviewed discussed as being important to their success. We tried our best to do a good job of introducing these skills while giving players enough information to get started with their development. The resources were provided at the end of each chapter in the hopes that players would do more study. I believe that when people know better, they do better.

There will be even more detailed materials to come, so stay tuned!

Tricia

I wrote an (article-based) Ph.D thesis on a related subject matter (https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/41569), so I thought I'd reply.

Based on both qualitative and quantitative evidence, experienced poker players, compared with inexperienced ones

1) have a more mature, "que sera, sera" -attitude towards losing money and tilting in general (inexperienced players in particular often interpret bad beats as "acts of injustice against what is perceived to be 'right'").

2) have less emotional personalities (players with alot of experience are less likely to be perturbed by everyday emotion-inducing matters)

3) are better able to regulate (control) negative, loss-induced emotions

(Both experienced an inexperienced players do tilt! However, whereas inexperienced players often tilt due to bad beats, experienced players are more disturbed by self-made mistakes than bad beats)

It seems that acquiring poker experience results in a more "mature" disposition towards losing and tilting in general. Some evidence suggested that poker had in fact been a "learning ground" for this emotional maturity. Although, conversely, it is also possible that those players who possess these traits to begin with -- i.e., real-life zen-masters -- are more likely to continue playing poker.

In our studies, high level of poker experience was clearly associated with a profound understanding of, e.g., mathematical concepts such as "variance". This, in turn, presumably helped experienced players to view bad beats NOT as "unjust events", but rather as "merely variance" -- variance being an inalienable part of the game.

I feel this interpretation resonates also with Mason Malmuth's point where bad beats putatively feel to inexperienced players as something that "should not by justice's sake happen" (something that "ought not happen"). As the true mathematical nature of "variance" is understood, it is also seen that bad beats will be inevitable. It is not true that you "ought" to win, if you are a 80% favourite.

Best regards,
Jussi Palomäki

Thank you for the link! I'll check it out at once. Your remarks are in line with my findings for Peak Poker Performance: A Qualitative Case Study. There are a number of variables which contribute to success in poker, and I'm excited to see more researchers studying the topic!

Tricia

No problem . I also just now learned about your book (Positive poker), which I'm excited to read asap. It's great to see more research done on this topic!

p.s. I searched and did not find "Peak Poker Performance: A Qualitative Case Study" -- is this an article or perhaps a book chapter? Would you mind emailing it to me: jussi.palomaki[at]helsinki.fi ?

br,
Jussi

Sent via email. Peak Poker Performance: A Qualitative Case Study is my doctoral dissertation.

Tricia

a bit off topic, sorry

Recently I want to purchase both of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2 on iTunes but it's only available on the U.S store. I'm in Singapore

Is there any other purchasing methods that I can use to those books?

Try Amazon.

thanks for the suggestion

i'll install Kindle app on my iPad and purchase Kindle version via Amazon

Don't know if the app is universal and if you can get it in your city state but the books are also available as Nook e-books here in the US.

This is a very interesting and enjoyable thread - thank you. I'm personally not a fan of Tendler's book so I'll be reading a sample of Positive Poker soon. Tendler seems to focus a bit too much on "why" things like tilt occur.

A lot of this thread comes down to this (for me) - there is a huge difference between knowing vs doing, or applying what you know. For example, think weight loss. Most people know what they 'should' be eating if they want to lose weight or get in better shape. They know they're making poor decisions daily. You could give them an exact meal plan but that doesn't mean they will follow it. I believe the same applies in poker. Even those who have a great understanding of the game lose, and lose often. They second guess, they try to overcompensate or adjust to table conditions or specific players too often, they force hands, they think their skill level is better than it is, they think, "well, this worked last time against so and so", etc. The list goes on.

We are not mechanical robots and there are many gray areas or assumptions in the technical aspects of the game. Many players disagree on many lines. Those gray areas are enough to make most second guess themselves and become results oriented. We all know where that leads...

I do believe you need to understand and respect the technical aspects but that will only get you so far. Again, knowing vs doing. Many know, not many do.

I'll be back when I have a chance to check out Positive Poker.